Why Outsourcing Failures Happen and How to Solve Them?

Today we will pay attention to why IT department outsourcing sometimes fails. IT outsourcing has many benefits that can easily grow your business fast, but nothing works perfectly in the world. Sometimes, you can face some challenges and failures that can negatively affect your plan, but today we take a closer look at outsourcing failures examples and try to find out how to prevent them. 

IT Outsourcing Failures 

• IT outsourcing failure #1: Cultural Differences

Hiring a remote team from different countries is definitely cost-efficient, but sometimes you can face misunderstanding and unproductive communication within your team. It is due to different mentality and work culture as they are all different in each country. 

What to Do?

To avoid such a headache of dealing with different temperaments and cultural issues – choose the right vendor. The company will provide you with IT specialists not only with certain skills but give you advice about the best countries to hire which will be mentaly close to yours. Also, you can pay attention to nearshore software development services – which means find nearshore partner and outsource your project neighboring countries with similar mentality and culture.

• IT outsourcing failure #2: Poor Communication

As mentioned above, miss-communication often occurs if you choose IT outsourcing. As well as language issues, there are time-zone differences, which means that you and your staff will have to work extended hours in order to keep in touch, which will lead to fatigue, bad morale and mistakes.

What to Do?

Make sure the IT staff are on the same wavelength as your own staff and that there is a good mix of personalities who can work together in harmonious teams. Bad communication can seriously impact the success of the service or project.  Another good solution is to use special online communication tools which are helping to simplify the communication and make the process more organized. Make sure that each employee is familiar with working remotely and has a certain experience and can easily function without micromanaging each step.

• IT outsourcing failure #3: Intense Management

Another outsourcing failure example is to get stressed and micromanage your team and a vendor 24/7. This caused lots of headaches for both sides: your team and your vendor. And, unfortunately it can cause a problem within your business relationships with your outsourcing company.

What to Do?

Cooperate with an outsourcing company you trust. Look at the reviews, ask for their cases, describe your requirements about the team and work with real professionals. Good outsourcing company is always ready to answer all your questions and report you about results whenever you need. 

• IT outsourcing failure #4: Unclear Expectations

Another reason why outsourcing often fails is due to unclear expectations from your outsourcing vendor. Some clients do not provide enough details about their preferences about the team, country, amount of workers they need or expect to get a new team ready in 1 week! 

What to Do?

Be clear about your requirements and expectations to avoid such a failure. Provide your outsourcing company with essential details about preferable countries, time-zone, level of experience of the future members of your team, English proficiency, your company’s goals that have to be accomplished. When your vendor double checks any questions – make sure you provide a detailed answer as quickly as possible to boost the process of hiring. 

• IT outsourcing failure #5: Changing Your Needs Too Fast

When your team needs expanding it is always good as your project grows hence when you ask for a rapid change within your work environment. Overall, changes always happen. If anything changes within your company, firstly have a detailed plan and strategy of a new task and what talents are required and then provide it to your outsourcing company. That will help to faster the process of hiring new experts without any delays. 

What to Do?

Right vendor is always flexible and ready to adjust to the new needs of your company. It does need some time but it won’t affect your productivity as your outsourcing company will find new talent as soon as possible.

• IT outsourcing failure #6: No Experience in Outsourcing

Why does outsourcing IT fail at the start? You are not familiar with best practices, common concepts, and workflow. To convey your vision to another group of people, especially someone you have never worked with before, is a difficult task that should not be underestimated.

What to Do?

An experienced vendor will walk you through the process, help you avoid the bottlenecks, and mitigate possible risks. They will help you define requirements, go through the discovery stage, and find the best people for the job. And overall will support you in every stage of cooperation. Do not hesitate to ask as many questions as need be. Do your own research about IT outsourcing companies and schedule a consultation with a vendor to find out if it is the right one. 

• IT outsourcing failure #7: Legal Process

The legal outsourcing process is not as standardized and depends significantly on the vendor’s location. From country to country, you might need to sign various additional papers that are not part of your location’s legal process. It all can be pretty overwhelming and frustrating. 

What to Do?

Discuss every possible part of the process, including situations where your vendor fails to perform or messes up something, and do not forget to cover the security issues. Your contract should entail clauses about compensation, working conditions, freelancer’s responsibilities, ownership information, and other relevant things.

Wrapping Up

As you can see IT outsourcing also has its issues and disadvantages. Lack of communication with your vendor, unclear requirements and expectations can lead to a big failure. But, there is always a way to prevent it.
When you choose the right vendor with real professionals you don’t need to worry about any headaches, just be clear with the requirements and discuss all details in advance.

If you are still looking for the right IT outsourcing company with great experience – message Qubit Labs. We hire the best tech talent in the most perspective outsourcing countries like Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. We are dealing with all IT outsourcing processes, preventing all negative issues and providing you with the best tech talent quickly and smoothly.